Michael Hau – författare

From the 1890s to the 1930s, a growing number of Germans began to scrutinize and discipline their bodies in a utopian search for perfect health and beauty. Some became vegetarians, nudists or bodybuilders, while others turned to alternative medicine or eugenics. In "The Cult of Health and Beauty in Germany", Michael Hau demonstrates why so many men and women were drawn to these life reform movements and examines their tremendous impact on German society and medicine. Hau argues that the obsessions with personal health and fitness was often rooted in anxieties over professional and economic success, as well as fears that modern industrialized civilization was causing Germany and its people to degenerate. He also examines how different social groups gave different meanings to the same hygienic practices and aesthetic ideals. What results is a penetrating look at class formation in pre-Nazi Germany that should interest historians of Europe and medicine and scholars of culture and gender.

From the 1890s to the 1930s, a growing number of Germans began to scrutinize and discipline their bodies in a utopian search for perfect health and beauty. Some became vegetarians, nudists or bodybuilders, while others turned to alternative medicine or eugenics. In "The Cult of Health and Beauty in Germany", Michael Hau demonstrates why so many men and women were drawn to these life reform movements and examines their tremendous impact on German society and medicine. Hau argues that the obsessions with personal health and fitness was often rooted in anxieties over professional and economic success, as well as fears that modern industrialized civilization was causing Germany and its people to degenerate. He also examines how different social groups gave different meanings to the same hygienic practices and aesthetic ideals. What results is a penetrating look at class formation in pre-Nazi Germany that should interest historians of Europe and medicine and scholars of culture and gender.

Performance Anxiety analyses the efforts of German elites, from 1890 to 1945, to raise the productivity and psychological performance of workers through the promotion of mass sports. Michael Hau reveals how politicians, sports officials, medical professionals, and business leaders, articulated a vision of a human economy that was coopted in 1933 by Nazi officials in order to promote competition in the workplace. Hau’s original and startling study is the first to establish how Nazi leaders’ discourse about sports and performance was used to support their claims that Germany was on its way to becoming a true meritocracy. Performance Anxiety is essential reading for political, social, and sports historians alike.